Faced with a dearth of electoral support in the North, the Conservative Party
is chasing region-friendly policies

When Conservatives arrive in Manchester this week for their autumn conference, they’ll find a city celebrating. The party atmosphere has nothing to do with a week of true blue speeches in the conference hall, though: it’s the 40th anniversary of the birth of Northern Soul. And unlike the ebullient songs that filled clubs such as the Manchester Twisted Wheel and the Wigan Casino, the Tory scene in the North is rather more downbeat. There will be no Conservative councillors in Manchester Town Hall to welcome David Cameron when he arrives: the city is a Tory-free zone.

It’s not the only northern city with a deep suspicion of the party of Margaret Thatcher. Of the 348 council seats in Liverpool, Newcastle, Sheffield and Manchester, none is held by Conservatives. The North East boasts just two Tory MPs. The North West fares a little better, with Tories holding 21 out of 75 seats, and in Yorkshire and the Humber it’s 35 per cent. Trying to drum up support for the party in the North has, in the words of the Flirtations, been nothing but a heartache since the late 1980s.

The leadership has been putting a great deal of thought into how to turn the North into a heartland of Tory support. I understand that there were discussions earlier this year over whether to write a manifesto for the North. But strategists decided that rather than highlighting regional divisions, a full manifesto should have a northern soul. No 10 has also appointed MPs such as Esther McVey and Kris Hopkins as regional spokesmen.

Meanwhile, campaigners are hunting for northern soul policies. In a Manchester pub on Monday, MPs and activists will launch a “pledge card” calling for policies to attract working-class voters in the North. The card, from the campaign group Renewal, will include demands for northern cities to gain more powers over planning as well as improved welfare-to-work schemes. Similarly, a group of North West MPs, including Ben Wallace, Paul Maynard and Eric Ollerenshaw, hold regular meetings on the sorts of policies the party needs to develop in order to keep northern voters happy.

But the party can’t just rely on new policies to woo people in this part of the country. Jake Berry is the plain-speaking MP for Rossendale and Darwen and a member of the Downing Street policy board. He first suggested appointing regional spokesmen, and thinks the key to success is as much about picking out existing achievements that his constituents will like as it is about looking for bright and shiny new ideas. “I sometimes feel that being a Conservative in the North is a bit like that bit in Monty Python where they ask: 'What have the Romans ever done for us?’,” he says, listing the policies that local voters go wild for when they actually find out they exist. These include the £26,000 benefit cap and the rise in the personal allowance for income tax.

Hexham MP Guy Opperman has a lonely life as a Tory in the North East, and has written a paper for No 10 on how he might win some friends. It emphasises that the Conservatives have successfully enticed voters from the Lib Dems in this year’s local elections. “We repeated our messages ad nauseam,” the paper says. That might sound obvious, but it is desperately important in areas where voters assume the Conservatives can offer them nothing.

As for what the Prime Minister and his Cabinet can do in Manchester this week, I hear that the party will use the location to reaffirm its support for HS2. Expect to see ministers portraying opposition to the project as merely London-centric, while arguing that cities that will benefit, including Manchester, can look forward to tens of thousands of jobs blossoming from the new line. The Conservatives will also increasingly refer to “the North-South railway”, rather than high-speed rail, to make this about uniting the country. They will dismiss what one No 10 source describes as the “footling little things” on the cost of living that Labour announced this week and instead argue that the Government is taking the big economic decisions to tackle the causes of Britain’s problems, while Labour merely frets about the symptoms.

Senior Tories are optimistic that growth is returning to the North as in other areas. One minister lists ports in the region that are thriving. But then he pauses and admits that some inland cities are causing concern. “We’re seriously worried about Stoke-on-Trent,” he says, explaining that there are few signs of industrial revival in the Potteries.

This risk that the recovery will be unbalanced within the North is one reason the battle to win support will take longer in some areas than others. Mr Opperman and Renewal talk about a mission lasting 15 to 20 years, while North West MPs are a little more optimistic. But all know that the party urgently needs to do something about its shrinking electoral map. And that means putting some northern soul into its campaigns over the next two years.